New Book by Bacharach

Many know Sam Bacharach as the author of “The Agenda Mover,” “Get Them on Your Side” or other books that deal with leadership and other subjects close to his work as ILR’s McKelvey-Grant Professor.

What many don’t realize is that he continues to publish fictional and ethnographic works stemming from his personal relationship with Israeli society.

In July, “Makarapo?” (translation: what happened here?), was published by Tel Aviv's Hakibbutz Hameuchad publishing house.

Published in Hebrew, the books draw on Bacharach’s personal relationship with Israel.

Bacharach’s continued interest in Israel is around the theme of identity. In “Shene Darkonim (translation: two passports), a novel published by Maariv in 1995, he explored the relationship between Jewish identity in America and Israeli identity.

His newest book, written with Israeli novelist Gon Ben Ari, a neighbor of Bacharach’s in Tel Aviv, explores the Israel of the 1950s.

Its stories are based on intensive interviews conducted over a period of two years focusing on personal vignettes from a generation which came to age after World War II.

"These stories try to capture the images that I remember from Israel as a child. It was a different time from today, with different dreams, with maybe different hopes, but, certainly, with different stories,” Bacharach said.

“Gon and I spent a lot of time interviewing characters, such as the first surfer in Tel Aviv, one of the first beekeepers, an owner of one of the oldest bookstores in Tel Aviv, one of the first women graduates of an Israeli agricultural school, a Latin-American radical leftist, all trying to find their space in Israeli society.”

“The book tells their stories and tries to capture something from the past, something that I sometimes think has been lost."